


The Illusion of Justice

by junko



Series: Curse of the Nue [24]
Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aizen corners Gin, while Renji chafes at the lieutenant's meeting...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Illusion of Justice

**Author's Note:**

> Note on my Gin Ichimaru's use of English: the only way I can cope with Gin in English is to imagine him with an (American) Southern drawl, say like something West Virginian, which I in my mind is the closest analog to his 'hick' speech patterns in Japanese. So, he's probably going to sound weird to you, but, in my internal ear this is the only way his "oh how scary" stuff works with the "ain't"s, (which I normally resist writing in general, and try to do through speech pattern rather than dialect). Meanwhile, if I had been in charge of voice actor casting, Renji would have sounded like a long shoreman from Brooklyn or the Bronx. 
> 
> It's probably just as well nobody asked me. :-)
> 
> And, so yeah, here's even more of "Curse" for you. Sorry, I'm on some kind of tear... probably because I have so much other work I should be doing. (Also, yeah, Matsumoto is a bit bitchy here. She's mad at Renji for forgetting to date her in the previous series "The Distance.")

Being inside the bubble of Kyōka Suigetsu’s released form made Gin uneasy, so he held on to his smile tightly. Standing all around them, as though frozen in time, Gin could see the rest of the captains that had assembled for the meeting. Of all of them, only Kaname Tōsen would know Sōsuke had even drawn Kyōka Suigetsu; the rest would be seeing something else right now, hearing some imaginary conversation.

Gin wanted to turn to Tōsen, grab the collar of his haori, and scream ‘Help me!’ but that peace-obsessed bastard had already turned coat. 

Gin was screwed.

And by his lover, too.

How ironic.

“What are you doing, Gin?” Sōsuke asked in that frightening purring tone he only ever used when they were absolutely alone, overheard by no one. Sōsuke looked different, too, almost like a wolf—even behind the fake glasses, his eyes seemed narrower and more penetrating. “Are you backing out on me?”

 _Yes, yes! I was trying to go to a nice safe prison, to be locked far away from you and your stupid, self-destructive plans that will destroy us all!_ “No, darling, of course not,” Gin replied, instead, in his ‘little-old-me?’ voice. “Why would I do something like that?”

“Don’t try to play me,” Sōsuke snarled, pointing a finger at Gin. “What the hell was all this ‘I have no excuse,’ ‘I accept whatever punishment’ crap? That’s not the plan! Why did you face the ryoka alone? I told you they didn’t matter; they would just serve to distract further.”

“I was hoping they’d kill me,” Gin admitted with a smile. 

“What?” Sōzuke demanded angrily.

That had been Gin’s original plan. Go alone and wait patiently for death. But then his damn survival instinct had kicked in, and, frankly, the threat wasn’t big enough. Honestly, he’d been right furious when he saw just who Jidanbō had opened the gate for -- one stupid shinigami kid and a bunch of human stragglers, seriously? What was Kisuke Urahara thinking sending those yahoos? Given how much Sōsuke went on about Kisuke’s brilliance, Gin had pinned his hopes on some kind of master hakuda ninja or at least a throng of well-trained warriors. All he got was some dumb orange-haired brat! 

Damn. Were all these supposed mastermind geniuses dumber than a bag of bricks?

If Kisuke had sent a super-ninja, Gin could have gone down a hero, in a valiant, failed attempt to defend the Seireitei. All right, no one liked him enough that they would have ever used the term ‘hero’ and in all likelihood he’d have been posthumously court-martialed and tossed unceremoniously in a pauper’s grave, but… Rangiku would have mourned him, at least. Now… fuck all, now he was stuck playing his part in this ridiculously overly complicated plot and she would curse his name.

Forever.

That thought broke his heart just a little. So few people even liked him, she was his only real friend.

“I want out,” Gin said simply. “How about it then? You could let me go, and I’ll just walk away all quiet-like and let you do your little thing over here and I can come on back once the dust settles. I ain’t got no reason to tell nobody. I won’t spoil your fun.”

“No,” Sōsuke said sharply. “We haven’t got time for this silliness. Pull yourself together, Gin. I need you; you’re a critical part of the plan. You must perform as we discussed.” He held up the bare blade of Kyōka Suigetsu, as if to remind Gin of its power, “And you will, whether you want to or not.”

It would be hard even for Kyōka Suigetsu to be everywhere at once, but Sōsuke did have a point. Right now, even as they spoke, gods only knew what the other captains saw, what they heard. In fact, Gin was probably already looking like the villain, like the man who would kill the gentle, ever-so likeable Captain Sōsuke Aizen.

It was all already over.

There would be no escape now. Gin would have to wait for another opportunity to surrender. Maybe that time, it would stick, and he could get away from this beautiful madman.

Gin shrugged, “Ah well, never mind. It was just a thought.”

#

Renji tipped his head against the wall of the stuffy conference room and closed his eyes. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and sighed. He’d seriously raced half-way across the Seireitei to cool his heels here and do nothing? Shouldn’t the lieutenants at least have some kind of meeting agenda of their own? Couldn’t they discuss the hassles of toilet paper requisitions or something? This ranked up there as one of the most surreally useless meetings of his life, topped only by the division meeting at the Eleventh with Yachiru, which had devolved into a pretend tea party. At least that had been weirdly fun and had come with cake, even if it was imaginary.

He cracked open his eyes to watch Shūhei Hisagi come in. It was an interesting look with the lieutenant’s badge on his bare arm, covering one of his usual armbands. He nodded at everyone and said, “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’d better apologize, Hisagi,” Renji snorted sarcastically, “You missed all the important shit. Big decisions got made. Oh, yeah, and we volunteered you to oversee the Fourth’s toilet brigade; hope you don’t mind.”

Shūhei’s eyes widened slightly, as if he were considering taking Renji seriously until Iba gave Renji’s shoulder a shove, nearly knocking him into Momo, and said, “Settle down, Abarai. This is just the way these go.”

“Well, it’s a stupid way to run a meeting,” Renji snarled, righting himself, “And a complete waste of my time. Shouldn’t what’s his name, the head captain’s second, be over here debriefing us, at least?”

“Yeah, does anyone know what this is about?” Kira asked, from where he sat on the floor on the other side of Momo.

Oh, awkward. Still, Kira had a right to know if his captain was going to end up on administrative leave or worse. “Listen, I think I do,” Renji said, pushing himself off the wall. “Are we at least allowed to gossip?”

Nanao Ise clucked her tongue, “If you call it ‘networking,’ I would approve.”

“So what do you _think_ you know, Renji?” Matsumoto asked, giving him a quirked eyebrow over the homemade fan she’d made from scrap paper and had been using to cool herself off.

“My guess is they’re in there talking about what happened at the West Gate,” Renji said, giving Kira a quick glance. Sure enough, he looked instantly miserable and vaguely guilty. “Me and mine were right behind the Third, so I saw what went down.”

At the mention of the Third, everyone turned to look at Kira, who seemed to shrink further against the wall. When Kira didn’t volunteer anything, Nemu Kurotsuchi asked Renji, “Which was what, exactly?”

“Uh, well, it looked to me like Ichimaru came alone,” Renji said, silently begging Kira to argue with him, tell him that his captain had things covered properly and that the Third had all been there, in place, just completely out of view.

“Really?” Matsumoto said with a little sneer, “You seriously think all this urgency has to do with that minor incident at the gate? I would have thought this was a disciplinary hearing for your division, Renji.”

“What?” Renji snapped, “Us? Why?” 

“Because it’s completely insane that you and that captain of yours are in charge of a prisoner basically related to both of you. She’s his sister and you’re her….”

‘Lover’ was implied, so Renji finished, “Best friend. What of it?”

“Sure, Renji, ‘friend,’ whatever-- she should still be at the Thirteenth, not under _your_ watch,” Matsumoto said, flashing her little paper fan around as she spoke. “What the hell does she have to with the Sixth? Nothing! You shouldn’t even have been sent to fetch her, neither of you. So much could have gone wrong! In fact, I figured something finally had, what with the sudden move to the Senzaikyū and the advance in execution date.”

“Whoa,” Renji said, taking a step closer to her, “Watch who you’re accusing of misconduct, lady. My division does everything by the book.”

Hisagi put himself between Renji and Matsumoto. “Stand down, Abarai. It’s not unreasonable for Ms. Rangiku to wonder what’s going on over at yours. It’s highly irregular that someone so close to your captain was under his lock and key.”

 _Yeah, and it’s been tearing him up, too_. But, Renji couldn’t say that. Iba put a heavy hand on Renji’s shoulder, urging him to step back. “We all know it’s been hard on you, man,” Iba said. “Your lady friend should have been at the Senzaikyū from the get go.”

“The whole thing seems so wrong,” Momo murmured from where she sat, her knees pulled up to her chest. “Rukia didn’t do anything so awful, did she?”

“It’s not for us to decide,” Kira reminded her quietly.

“Damn straight,” Matsumoto said with another snap of her fan and a toss of her hair. “I was starting to think that little Kuchiki brat was going to get away with everything, too, thanks to a rich big brother who can pull all the strings and line all the pockets.”

“Oi,” Renji said, starting to lunge, but found Iba holding him back. “Byakuya’s not like that. He'd never use bribery to go around the law.”

Even though Hisagi had spread his arms to protect Matsumoto, she put a hand on his shoulder and peered over him to taunt Renji, waving her fan at him, “Oh, like I’m supposed to believe he’s so cold-hearted that he’d let his baby sister hang? Do you seriously expect any of us to buy that he’s not lifting a finger to try to save her?”

But, he wasn’t.

Byakuya had given up on Rukia days ago.

Renji felt defeat and despair overwhelm his anger. He spit on the floor, “Fuck you, Rangiku.”

#

The rest of the lieutenants’ meeting involved a lot of tense silences and accusatory glances. The women huddled around Matsumoto somewhat protectively, while the guys all eyed Renji like they were ready to intercede if he decided to leap across the room and strangle her. Hisagi actually kept a hand on Kazeshini, which sort of pissed Renji off, yet at the same time had him fantasizing and strategizing about fighting another long range-weapon like Zabimaru. 

He’d have felt a lot better if he could pace, but it was clear if he even twitched a muscle involuntarily the entire room was going to nuclear on his ass. Except maybe Momo; she kept shooting him these sympathetic glances, which only made things worse.

Then the alarms went off, breaking the moment and the mood.

**Author's Note:**

> Argh! Re-reading the Manga shows me I've made an error. Renji actually connects with Byakuya after this meeting, it's later he goes out the window--apparently after a meeting at the Fourth. 
> 
> Hmmm, maybe, since only a few people have seen this, I'll change around the ending. I'd kind of like them to talk a bit more before he runs off to fight Ichigo.


End file.
